Land Sense - Remote Sensing in Surety Pro

Modified on 2017/09/18 19:22 by Adam — Categorized as: Uncategorized

Land SenseTM represents remote sensed imagery data, tools and services provided by AgriData, Inc. It is accessed through the Surety® Pro version of the mapping software.

Accessing Land Sense in Surety® Pro

After creating or selecting a Client in Surety® Pro, select or draw a field or area of interest. You will then access the Land Sense™ interface by clicking the Land Sense™ link on the right panel. This will launch the Land Sense™ imagery manager for the selected field/area.

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Land Sense imagery

Sentinel 2A & B satellite data is currently the only imagery dataset available. For more information on the Sentinel 2 product, view the “Sentinel 2 Technical Guide” and the “Introduction to Remote Sensing Guide”.

Part 1 – Land Sense imagery manager Interface

In the upper left corner, just below the header, Area of Interest will be shown in the blue tile. It currently lists the Client, Farm and year or just Client and year if no Farm is selected.

The imagery manager page will contain a tile for each image available for a given area of interest and within search criteria, such as date range or source. Currently the date range is set from January 1, 2017 to the current date. Each tile represents an image date, source, and cloud cover percentage as well as an area to view thumbnails of derived products which you can choose from at the bottom of the tile.

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Part 2 - Creating Derived Products

To create a derived product listed on the image tile, click one of the derived product icons at the bottom of the tile. The product will have been created when a thumbnail of the derived product appears in the tile.

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For explanation of derived products see Appendix A, or download the “Introduction to Remote Sensing Guide”.

The first time you attempt to create a derived product for a given image tile, Land Sense™ will check to see if the image is “local” or needs to be downloaded. If the image is ”local”, it will create the derived product thumbnail within seconds. If the imagery data needs to be downloaded it will begin the download process. Depending on internet speed and size of the product this may take sometimes several minutes to achieve.


Once the image is “local” it will remain there for some time and any area of interest that falls within that image area will access it as a “local” image.

You can switch between derived product thumbnails by clicking another product icon.

Part 3: Adding derived products to the map interface

Derived images created in the imagery manager can be added to the main map interface. These new layers will be accessible through the Land Sense™ layer name under the Layers tab.


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Part 4: Controlling and viewing Land Sense™ images on the mapping interface

Once a derived product has been added to the mapping interface it is accessed and controlled as a Layer under Boundaries called Land Sense™. Clicking the small + sign next to the Land Sense™ layer will expand the Land Sense layers and list all imagery available to view on the map interface for the displayed map region.

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By clicking the checkbox next to the image product desired, the image will be displayed on the map interface. See Appendix B: FAQ-Q4

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There are three additional controls for each listed product and are represented by icons to the right of the product identifier.




Appendix A: available derived products

NDVI - The most widely used, and a basis for many other vegetation indices, is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI. It works with the relationship between the NIR reflectance and visible red reflectance values to gives us an index related to relative biomass.

NDVI=(NIR−Red)/(NIR+Red)

NDVI comparison between healthy and unhealthy plant

NDVI comparison between healthy and unhealthy plant


Healthy Plant vs Unhealthy Plant

(0.50−0.08)/(0.50+0.08) = 0.72 (0.35−0.25)/(0.35+0.25) = 0.17

This index gives a value between -1 and 1, with most biomass readings in the 0.1 – 0.9 range and the higher value representing a higher relative biomass.

RGB - Resembling that of a picture taken with a handheld camera or a smartphone, true color imagery is a combination of the three visible spectral bands, Red, Green, and Blue or RGB. These images are used for base maps, feature recognition, boundary and other feature drawings or whenever ground features are to be recognized by their actual color.

Appendix B: FAQ (frequently asked questions)

Q1: Why is there sometimes more than one tile for a given image date and source?


Q2: It shows an image date on the tile but the true color (RGB) is all black or NDVI, EVI etc. is all one solid color?


Q3: What does the cloud percentage represent for each image?


Q4: Why does the number of Land Sense™ products available change as I zoom in and out, regardless of the field selected?


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